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Marketers, should we be more honest about gender stereotyping?

Earlier this year I attended the Women in Tech ‘Advocating Inclusivity’ event. As an icebreaker we were asked to solve a riddle, you may have heard it before:

A father and son are in a car accident. The father dies instantly, but the son is taken to a hospital. The surgeon comes in and says, “I can’t operate on this boy.”

“Why?” asks the nurse

“Because he’s my son.”

How is this possible?

Got it?

The surgeon is a woman.

Did I get it? Nope! The room was filled with members of a group which has the sole purpose of improving gender equality and no one could correctly answer the riddle!

Gender stereotyping

No matter how much pro-equality media we consume and no matter how many conversations we have about the importance of equality, we still have these bizarre stereotypes ingrained in our brains.

Where do they come from? At what point did we develop these views?

Earlier this year, Inspiring the Future released an ad depicting just how early onset gender bias can be. Children between the ages of five and seven were asked to draw a surgeon, a firefighter and a pilot. 66 pictures were drawn, 61 of which were men.

So who is responsible?

Parents? Teachers? Advertisers? The media?

In most cases it’s all of the above. Even if we don’t think we’re doing it, we are. Perhaps part of the problem is we all think we’re above stereotyping. I certainly thought I was. Do we all need to be more honest about it?

We’re in the land of startups this week, spending a day in the life of Ann-Marie Rossiter, Head of Marketing at events marketplace HeadBox. As usual, we’ll be finding out what it takes to succeed in this role, from skills and tools to the daily routine. If you’d like to appear in this feature, get […]